Note that all of the ICANN players are being very
careful to delay things to clear the credit card
charge-back windows. They get to then keep the
money and the average person is out.

At some point, the credit card companies will likely
have to deny charges for all of these ICANN domain
name scams. That may drive the market to a
system where cash is the only acceptable way to
pay for domain names, or some sort of Internet
debit card, similar to the phone cards with virtual
cash inside.

Dave Crocker and Bill Manning had their eyes on
the .US prize and the U.S. Government over-looked
the whole lottery scam, and gave NeuLevel .US.

ENUM is of course another big prize, aimed at
collecting $5 a year for every phone number.

What has also been happening is that new players
have been using the ICANN TLDs to test their
new infrastructure, DNS, credit card billing, and
Registrar interfaces. They now have had over a
year to catch up to all of the companies that
ICANN robbed by taking $50,000 with no intention
of allowing them in the legacy root servers.

Another argument to use with your credit card company is that charges for entry in the orignial .biz lottery are illegal gambling debts and so are uncollectable. This approach might not be subject to the time limit on chargebacks.

I called Dotster Tuesday since they never replied to my email I sent them on Sunday. On the phone I gave them my account information, number of applications, the amount I paid, credit card#, etc...the Dotster rep was friendly and took all the information and told me I'd receive a response, likely via phone, later that day or the next.

So at this point, Dotster has been made aware of my situation and has all my information...it will be interesting to see what happens...and that's why I write this...how have others progressed with getting their refunds and what registrars have been most cooperative and which haven't...?